Tableau Your Data!: Fast and Easy Visual Analysis with Tableau Software

CHAPTER 11

Automating Server with Tableau's Command Line Tools

As your Tableau Server deployment expands, the number of users and amount of data you have to manage will grow. Tableau provides two command line tools that will help you automate routine tasks. Most of the functions the command line tools provide are available directly within Tableau Server's user interface.

Using Windows Notepad (or your favorite text editor) you can automate tabcmd to run via a batch file. Then by using Windows Task Scheduler you can trigger the batch file to run at a specific time or based on a specific triggering event. Of course many popular scripting or programming tools can call Tableau's command line functions to automate tasks. How you use these tools is only limited by your desire and creativity.

If you are a system administrator and accustomed to writing script and using the Windows Command Processor and Windows Task Scheduler, you will not have difficulty incorporating tabcmd or tabadmin into your existing toolset. Many people don't use the command line utilities because their full functionality is not clearly understood, or they have not seen specific use case examples. Tableau Software provides some good introductory videos on their website. You can find those by searching for On Demand Training and looking in the server section for the tabcmd and tabadmin videos.

WHAT DO TABCMD AND TABADMIN DO?

Tableau's two command line tools are tabcmd and tabadmin. Tabcmd provides functions for performing ...